The Resolution

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'Why write the play if you know the end?'

-- John Guare

Resolutions can be very short. Marsha Norman's for 'NIGHT, MOTHER has one 8-line stage direction followed by a single line of dialogue. Of only seven words. These things are practically never longer than a few pages. But of course -- here comes the exception . . .

Wendy Wasserstein's THE HEIDI CHRONICLES runs an entire 13-page scene plus 3 pages of the previous scene. Now, that's a long Resolution. But she made it work. A word of caution: hardly anybody else has pulled this off.

As you roll toward the end of the Resolution, resist the temptation to tie everything up with a neat bow. That's just Television tugging at your sleeve. Theatre gives you the luxury of leaving some secondary issues for your audience to work out on their own. Do it. Audiences like it and so will you.

Here's what Tennessee Williams left for the audience to work out, after settling the overriding question in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF: Who gets the money? Brick and his wife, Maggie, do. And we also know that Brick is willing to have a sexual relationship again with his wife -- at least briefly. But what we'll never know from the playwright is . . .

• What if Maggie doesn't get pregnant tonight?

• Will Big Daddy care if he discovers Maggie lied to him about being pregnant with Brick's child?

• Can Brick really hang in there with Maggie for the long term?

The central character of a play -- the one from whose Point of View the story is told -- nearly always has The Last Word. Assuming they're still alive.

A classic example of this is CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF: In the original version of Act III, it's Brick's play and he has the last word. In the revised so-called Broadway version of Act III, it becomes Maggie's play and she has the last word.